Project description
This is a project owned by Oman Electricity Transmission Company (OETC). OETC owes and manages multiple substations in the Sultanate of Oman. The requirement was to automate the lighting control in these substations and to have a remote central monitoring and control facility in their HQ in Muscat. Each of these substations are on an average distance of 300km away from Muscat. This sort of remote monitoring system of lighting automation for multiple sites (18 nos.) is the first kind of job executed in Middle-East region.

Our VAP M/s. New 4th Dimension (N4D) in close co-ordination with the Philips Controls team designed and pitched with Dynalite Lighting Automation solution for the application and were selected post detailed scrutiny and evaluation of not only their quality of design, but also on their capability to commission the system including high-level integration needed for the application, which called for connecting each of these substations with the central HQ on WAN. It is worthwhile mentioning that in the process they overcame stiff competition from the likes of Schneider and ABB.

Each substation has ON/OFF controls with motion based switching and local manual override via Antumbra Keypads and Local Master control via DTP170 touch screen with password protection. Daylight harvesting feature is being used in designated areas with ON/OFF functionality. Lighting circuits in each area would be switched OFF sequentially with time delay if no motion is detected for the set period of time. Each substation was equipped with an Envision Gateway and was connected to the WAN. The WAN infrastructure is provided by OETC and is used for multiple other systems including BMS, Access controls security etc. Our system was configured on a separate VLAN and a central computer was proposed with EM software. These remote substations were then configured in the EM for full monitoring and controls. The end-user team was trained by our VAP to easily operate the different parameters they wanted to monitor and control. Also they system was configured to report faults whenever it occurred.

Impact on the end-user

As a result, the end-user expectations of Real-Time Remote Monitoring, Real-Time energy Management, Real time device functionality status/fault monitoring and optimum labor force management has been comprehensively met which was instrumental in them choosing a higher cost option of Networked Dynalite solution over the time tested choice of stand-alone controls for the substations which is still an option they have not done away with.